No Justice in California Case of Muslim Who Brought About Death of Jewish Protester

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The facts at hand are ghastly enough in themselves. In Nov. 2023, Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji was one of a crowd of pro-Hamas protesters in Thousand Oaks, California, facing off against pro-Israel counterprotesters in the heated days immediately following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 Israelis. Alnaji, 53, was wielding a megaphone like a weapon, and confronted Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man who was among the counterprotesters. Alnaji hit Kessler on the head with his megaphone; Kessler fell back and hit his head on the pavement, and died not long afterward. And now, it looks as if justice will not be done.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported Friday that Alnaji has pleaded guilty to “felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury, after initially pleading not guilty.” While the maximum sentence for such charges is four years in the state prison, Alnaji has agreed to a plea deal that will allow him instead to spend “no more than a year in county jail.”

JTA explains just how cushy a deal this is: “While the maximum sentence for his charges is four years in state prison, the court indicated that, as a result of the guilty plea, it is likely to place Alnaji on formal probation with no more than 365 days in county jail. A county jail sentence is generally considered less severe than time in state prison and is served locally, often with possibilities for work release, electronic monitoring or early release.”

Making this sentence all the more insulting and disturbing is the fact that Alnaji, despite his guilty plea, is currently free on $50,000 bail. The questions are inevitable: in a culture that increasingly ignores the rise and mainstreaming of antisemitism while being consumed with anxiety over an imaginary and massively exaggerated “Islamophobia,” did Alnaji get this sweetheart deal because authorities were afraid of appearing to be too pro-Israel and “anti-Muslim”?

The role of Islam in the death of Paul Kessler will likely never be known, but one odd fact suggests that it did play a role. At the scene of the crime, Loay Alnaji was captured in a photograph looking incongruously contented. In the Qur’an, Allah promises to “heal the hearts” of those who fight the unbelievers and thereby allow the deity to punish him at the hands of the believers: “Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, and he will lay them low and give you victory over them, and he will heal the hearts of people who are believers, and he will remove the anger of their hearts.” (Qur’an 9:14-15) Could that have been the source of Alnaji’s contentment? Such questions are never to be answered, as in today’s climate, they aren’t even allowed to be asked.

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